Saturday, March 15, 2014

IBRAHIM ISA's FOCUS

Wednesday, 05 March
2014

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“OSCAR”
Winning Or “NOT”

“THE ACT OF KILLING” HAS DIRECTED

WORLD ATTENTION TO INDONESIA

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Film Director Joshua
OPPENHEIMER:

“There was lots of foreign support for the
genocide and that is used as an excuse not to apologize,”
“It’s my hope that the US will also take
responsibility for its part so the Indonesian government
can come to terms with the past and we can move on to
reconciliation and healing,”

* * *

‘Act of Killing’
Director Joshua Oppenheimer Hopes – – –

US Will Admit Role in 1965 Killings , Inter Press Service,03-03-2014

Washington.Watching former
gangsters and paramilitary leaders proudly reenact
scenes from Indonesia’s military-led mass killings of
1965-66 in the Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Act of
Killing,” it’s easy to forget the role of outside
countries.

“It was like I had
wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to
find the Nazis were still in power,” director Joshua
Oppenheimer told IPS in an exclusive interview.But while US covert
support for the deadly crackdown that killed at least half
a million people is not the focus of his film, Oppenheimer
hopes the powerful country will at least admit its role.
“There was lots of
foreign support for the genocide and that is used as an
excuse not to apologize,” he said during a recent
visit to Washington.
“It’s my hope that
the US will also take responsibility for its part so the
Indonesian government can come to terms with the past and
we can move on to reconciliation and healing,” he
added.While the US has not
formally admitted to that part, declassified documents show
the CIA directly assisted the Indonesian army in its quest
to eliminate the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) —
killing anyone accused of links in the process — after a
failed coup attempt.
“The simplest way to
put it is that in the month leading up to the events of Sep.
30, 1965 the US sought through covert operations to provoke
an armed clash between the Indonesian army and the communist
movement in the hope that it would eliminate the PKI,” said
Bradley Simpson, who heads a project at the National
Security Archive that declassified key US government
documents concerning Indonesia and East Timor during the
reign of General Suharto.
“Perhaps most
important is the fact that the [Lyndon] Johnson
administration sent clear signals that they enthusiastically
supported an attempt to destroy the communists from the
bottom up knowing full well that this would lead to mass
violence,” he told IPS.But while Oppenheimer
may have produced one of the most unique documentaries of
all time, he had initially set out to film a different story
in Indonesia.While documenting a
community of exploited plantation workers in 2001,
Oppenheimer, then in his late twenties, witnessed how they
were bullied by the “Pancasila Youth,” a gangster-led
paramilitary organization that used death squads and
continues to repress the population to this day.After victims of the
genocide were intimidated into not talking to him by order
of the military — the leaders of which proudly display their
brute hold on the population and corruption on camera — some
survivors urged Oppenheimer to interview the perpetrators
instead.
“I was afraid at
first, but after I got over that fear I realized that
everyone I interviewed was boastful about even the most
horrible details of the killings, which they described with
smiles on their faces,” he said.In the eight years
that it took Oppenheimer to complete “The Act of Killing,”
which was executive produced by internationally known
directors Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, he only discovered
his main character, Anwar Congo — the founder of a
right-wing paramilitary organization that grew out of the
death squads — in the final year of filming.Anwar, who describes
torturing and murdering suspected communists “like we were
killing happily,” acts as though he is the director of the
documentary as he collaborates with friends and colleagues
to recreate scenes from his memory.
“I felt his pain was
close to the surface, so I lingered on him,” said
Oppenheimer.But while Anwar seems
haunted by his past, especially by a recurring nightmare of
a severed head with eyes he failed to close staring at him,
he ultimately reverts to the excuse that he was just
following orders.
“I don’t think Congo
saw this as his redemption,” said Oppenheimer. “He doesn’t
recognize in a cognizant way that what he did was wrong.”After Anwar watched
the film “he was very moved and emotional and then he pulled
himself together and said, ‘this film shows what it’s like
to be me,’” Oppenheimer told IPS.
“His conscience was
guiding the process and it sounds very complex but for him
it was simply about showing me how he killed,” he said.Adi Zulkadry, a fellow
executioner who warns Anwar that the material in the film
could be used against them, seems to have a deeper
understanding of the magnitude of his actions but also
justifies them as a consequence of war.Pressed to respond to
the fact that what he did is described by the Geneva
Conventions as “war crimes,” Adi says he doesn’t
“necessarily agree with those international laws.”
“War crimes are
defined by the winners… Americans killed the Indians. Has
anyone punished them for that? Punish them!” he proclaims.But while Adi denies
the value of Indonesia coming to terms with its past by
admitting that what happened was a genocide, Oppenheimer’s
film may be aiding the process — it has been screened
thousands of times in Indonesia, and is available for free
online.
“The Act of Killing”
was also recently shown at the US Library of Congress.Senator Tom Udall of
the foreign relations committee, who introduced the film to
a group of senators, told US News and World Report that,
“The United States government should be totally transparent
on what it did and what it knew at the time, and they should
be disclosing what happened here.”But it remains to be
seen whether Washington will change a policy of denial.
“Fifty years is long
enough for both the US and Indonesia not to call it a
genocide,” said Oppenheimer. Inter-Press Service

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The
Jakarta Globe: The
Nation Needs an Act of Restitution

March 2, 2014Oscar-winning or not,
Joshua
Oppenheimer’s “The Act of Killing” has directed worldwide
attention to Indonesia’s darkest past, when in 1965-1966 up to a
million people were killed in a state-sponsored, systematic
butchering. There is no more hiding place for Indonesia.

We have to admit our own
history, whether we like it or not. We can’t afford to pretend
there was no wrong done, as our government and ruling elites
have
always maintained. It’s such denials that enable a documentary
like
“The Act of Killing” to come into being in the first place.

Continued denials and a
failure to tackle the issue places the entire nation in the
position
of protecting the mass murderers, a crime that puts Indonesia
among
the lowest of nations. And why should we protect those involved
in
the killings in the first place? The purge was conducted by a
past
generation, and most of the current generation have nothing to
do
with the crime. Why should we sacrifice the present and the
future to
protect the organizations — most of which still exist — that
were
involved?

It’s false to assume that
admitting past crimes, apologizing for them and then moving on
will
shame the organizations. We believe they are noble steps that
should
have been taken a long time ago so that the state can provide
restitution for surviving victims and families of the murdered.

These families have been
waiting for so long. The demand for justice won’t go away. If
the
elites of the organizations involved in the mass killings will
participate in restoring justice, they will help clean the stain
on
their histories — rather than bring them down with denials, and
together with them the nation’s pride.

Must we wait for outsiders
to
force us? It’s sad that we should need the Oscars to prompt us
to
right this terrible wrong for ourselves.

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COMMENTS: Too bad it didn't win,
it would've been great to see more exposure to the movie in
Indonesia. Simple as it may, my personal wish as the outcome
of this movie is for the present-day PP thugs to get punished
for what they did extorting money from businesses and running
a mob-like protection racket and other illegal activities
openly and with support from people in the government and
member of the parliament.

* * *So long as you are a
nation that put the army on a pedestal, you will never unravel
the 1965 massacre, and others (albeit on lesser scale) later -
the 1980s Petrus killings, 1991 East Timor Santa Cruz
massacre, 1998 reformasi killings...* * *